Tips On Soldering Solar Panel Cells

I just wanted to share my experience with how to solder solar cells when building a solar panel, what worked and what didn't.

If you would like to share with others your experience soldering solar cells then add your experience here.

What didn't work.

I tried to use the flux from a flux pen. When I heated the flux what happened was the solder which contain no flux would not stick. When I removed the soldering iron from the flux and the flux cooled it became hard and there was no way to clean the solder tab of the hard flux. I actually broke the first solar cell just trying to clean this hard flux off.

I tried to solder with just the silver solder with no flux, still could not get the solder to stick.

I tried a 30 watt iron and a 40 watt iron but still could not get the solder to stick.

By the way the flux pen and silver solder came with the cells I bought on ebay.

Maybe the flux in the pen was bad but I will never use a flux pen again.

What did work

I have been using rosin core solder for 30 years without any problems so I decided to try the rosin core solder.

First I used a pencil eraser to lightly clean the silver soldering tabs. Then I heated the tabs and applied a little rosin core solder. I held the tabbing wires in place with the pencil and ran the soldering iron on top of the tabbing wire and across the soldered tabs. That worked. From this point I didn't have any other problems.

As far as what wattage soldering iron I used a 40 watt iron. I have read where anything between 30 and 90 watts is recommened. One of the temperature controlled irons would be ideal.

The rosin core solder I used has an Alloy of 60/40.